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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732074">Boundaries</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies'>DragonflyxParodies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Background batsiblings, Bruce is a dick, Gen, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason sets boundaries, Loss of Trust, Roy Stans Therapy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:42:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,232</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732074</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason's been working on himself. Genuinely, honestly, trying to be better.<br/>But it's so much easier to tell your abuser to fuck off when it's not your well-being on the line.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jason Todd &amp; Bruce Wayne, Roy Harper/Koriand'r/Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>196</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Boundaries</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>               Tim’s the only one with keys. Damian has blueprints or something – he knows where the traps are and how to disarm them. Dick plasters himself to the window until Jason opens it for him, which is frankly preferable. And the girls just materialize wherever they want.</p>
<p>Alfred doesn’t come out much. He mostly just sends packages, drops things off. It’s blackmail – he wants Jason at the Manor.</p>
<p>Bruce, on the other hand.</p>
<p>Jason thinks it just makes their whole…<em>situation </em>worse. That everybody else has physical access. Also, the first time Bruce tried sneaking into one of his safe houses, he tripped a bomb and blew the warehouse up, and Jason has <em>not </em>let him forget it. Asshole was lucky it wasn’t an apartment building.</p>
<p>So; Bruce has no access. Bruce doesn’t even have his comm channel at the moment, though Barbara is bound to give it to him out of spite once she figures it out.</p>
<p>Jason’s not totally sure how he feels about it. Roy had suggested it. And he’d – yeah. He got it. And it’s been <em>fine</em>, kind of, because he interacts with Bruce less now even if their meetings are now <em>so </em>much more stressful. But it still leaves him aching and sick and lonely.</p>
<p>He comes back to his apartment just as the sky is starting to lighten. He’s ready to pass out face-first on the kitchen floor, and he doesn’t bother <em>not </em>groaning like a fucking whale as he struggles out of his armor and guns and helmet and boots.</p>
<p>He’s tired enough that the world is kind of swimming, and his thoughts are molasses – and so he realizes all in one sudden jolt that the room’s not entirely dark and he kind of flips back over the arm of his couch with a high-pitched little gasp.</p>
<p>“The <em>fuck.”</em></p>
<p>By the time he’s struggled through the burn in his limbs and managed to sit up, Bruce’s hulking shadow has positioned itself firmly in front of his fancy Wall of Murder. Damian had named it that the one time he’d broken in with the crowbar, and Jason had refused to fight him, and then he and Tim had dunked the kid’s head in a toilet in revenge after that whole mess calmed down, and the name had stuck.</p>
<p>Jason’s not angry. Just – <em>ashamed</em>. He doesn’t register Bruce’s presence unless he’s on edge, already alert, already priming for a fight. Subconsciously, he still thinks Bruce is <em>safe</em>.</p>
<p>“You’re hurt.” Bruce says, and Jason almost pauses.</p>
<p>“The hell you doing in my apartment?”</p>
<p>He’s past the point of assuming one of the assholes let him in. And he’s past the point of underestimating Bruce – Bruce would just steal it, if he knew Tim had a key.</p>
<p>He <em>is </em>hurt, kind of. Just…<em>incredibly </em>sore. And bruised. And sore.</p>
<p>But that’s not Bruce’s business.</p>
<p>Bruce doesn’t answer a minute, and even as exhausted and sluggish as he is, Jason recognizes waffling when he sees it. And that – hurts. Strikes something.</p>
<p>Kori had asked him to go home with her. Get out of Gotham. He’d said no, but it was – maybe going away for a bit would be a good idea.</p>
<p>Jason struggles off the couch, and firmly ignores Bruce when he steps closer. It takes more out of him than he’d like – to not tense, to not shy back, to not stop moving.</p>
<p>After his shitshow of a return, Jason had gone back to Talia and asked her to help him handle his presence. He hadn’t realized until Bruce had – he hadn’t realized the way he’d learn to swing his weight around, to intimidate. Hadn’t realized he’d adopted that in the rage and betrayal and pain of his resurrection. Jason hadn’t come back to Gotham until he’d learned not to do it, even when pushed past his limits. If he tried to intimidate <em>anyone </em>when things got hairy…</p>
<p>“’F you’re not gonna talk, leave.” Jason says, and he keeps his voice miraculously steady as he fishes a glass out of a cabinet and sets it on the counter beside him. Just one. He knows Bruce picks up on it, on the message there.</p>
<p>Being so – <em>coy. Passive</em>. Subtle, Roy calls it. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He doesn’t like it. But Roy’s right – Bruce has already proven that direct confrontation doesn’t work. And judging by how awkward Bruce is being now, he’s at least picking up <em>this </em>refusal.</p>
<p>He’s got the dregs of a gallon of chocolate milk in the fridge still from last week – Mom’s birthday. It was a stupid, sentimental thing, and he <em>hates </em>showing it to Bruce, even knowing Bruce has <em>no </em>idea the context behind it – but it’s the only thing he’s got beside tap water and it has the added benefit of throwing Bruce off-key. And with how badly Jason’s feeling, as pessimistic as he is for how this night will go, he’ll take whatever he can get.</p>
<p>He cries sometimes about it, the mind games and politics behind simple meetings between his family members – because it isn’t nearly as bad with his siblings, but it’s still there. But only when he’s so sleep deprived he starts hallucinating and so sure he’s alone he damn near starts talking to himself. He’d freaked Kori out, when he’d first seen her interact with her sister. No need to worry there – Kori’s sister is all snake, but it’s a genuine game to the two of them and something they <em>bond </em>over. It’s almost <em>healthy</em>, and that freaks Jason out more than anything else the two women could do to each other. He mostly avoids Kori’s family for that reason.</p>
<p>He raises an eyebrow and gives his head that weird little wiggle he learned from Steph, the kind that makes him cringe and try to justify himself <em>immediately </em>whenever she does it to him. She’d learned it from Barbara, who is even more effective at it, but Babs refuses to teach him Anything, with a capital a, because he hacked her systems once to prove a point. But she hadn’t underestimated him since, and Steph was a good teacher, so it all worked out.</p>
<p>Bruce seems to visibly struggle with himself a moment before he speaks.</p>
<p>“The old garage on West Avenue.”</p>
<p>It’s not said as brusquely as usual. Jason cuts Bruce a sharp, leveled look. He’s not here on a case. It’s an excuse for something else.</p>
<p>“Shelter. You’re not welcome there.”</p>
<p>“A suspect – “ And Jason knows <em>exactly </em>who Bruce is looking for. It leaves him – <em>breathless. </em>Just for an instant. Jason’s glass is halfway to his mouth. He sets it down with a soft clink.</p>
<p>“You’re looking at him.”</p>
<p>It’s a lie. <em>This time</em> it is a lie. The last time a too-young boy defended a woman subject to the overwhelming and inescapable power of a monster while everyone else turned their back – <em>that </em>had been him.</p>
<p>But Jason won’t let Bruce destroy sixteen-year-old Terry McGinnis in the same way he destroyed Jason. And Roy would be disappointed, but suddenly every single regret and pain and hesitation lingering in his bones <em>vanishes</em>. It’s not <em>him </em>on the line anymore. He’ll get an earful later, but –</p>
<p>And, because Bruce does not trust him, has <em>never </em>trusted him, has never believed him or in him or thought him capable or just or <em>human</em> –</p>
<p>Bruce believes him.</p>
<p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>one of my hc for jason that shows up in probably all of my works w/him in it is that he has a very hard time standing up to B when it's just him on the line, but the minute somebody else ends up in the line of fire he goes full scorched earth.<br/>And I wanted to write him recognizing and trying to distance himself from Bruce in a healthy-ish way.<br/>Also also, I'm still not over the way RHATO v2 started w/Bruce seeing Jason shoot somebody on tv, flip shit, realize he was wrong to jump to assumptions, and then end w/B seeing Jason shoot somebody on tv, flip shit, and jump to assumptions. That's just not good writing if you intend to do anything but severe their relationship dc, why are you so bad at this??</p></blockquote></div></div>
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